Casino Royale Review

22112006

I watched Casino Royale last night with a bunch of friends. The best Bond movie in a long time. Then again, the older ones I never saw, except for Pierce Brosnan’s 007 movies. And Casino Royale was about 21 times better than those movies.

Spoilers in the full review inside!

It starts off with a black and white scene that tells of how Bond received his 00 status. And through clever set-up, Bond says his famous line “Bond. James Bond.” The black and white look gives it the feel of the an old, classic Bond film. Quite a brilliant start.

After the noir-ish start, we are introduced to the skills of the new Bond with a chase scene that is almost as good as the Simba-Wildebeast Stampede chase. The acrobatics of the new Bond and his chasee is set in the construction site of a tall building. The chase begins and somehow they end up at least 100 feet in the air, holding on to the the crane as they fight. By the end of their fight, they’ve laid waste to the construction site.

This is a good introduction to Bond and tells us that this new 007 is quite reckless. But this film also shows different sides of Bond, from an over-confident man to having a crazy-in-love-like-Jay-Z-and-Beyonce romance. This film goes far deeper into Bond’s character than the Pierce Brosnan Bond films.

The new Bond girl is Eva Green as Vesper Lynd. Her real name could be a good name for a Bond girl. No wonder she was good as a Bond girl. Her character is definitely interesting, and she’s very pretty in a hard, stone-faced way. She is definitely the best Bond girl for me. Much better than Halle Berry in Die Another Day.

I had actually forgotten that Die Another Day was the last Bond movie released; I thought it was Tomorrow Never Dies or the one after that. Goes to show how forgettable those movies were, but that’s another story.

The cinematography and setting of Casino Royale is really breathtaking sometimes. The detail that they manage to capture in even the busy scenes are a sight to behold. They managed to capture what is important in the scene as well as show the little details that gives it life. The settings are nicely chosen. They range from subtropical jungles to a rustic European city with cafes lining the streets. I especially liked the multimillion dollar Italian villas set beside a rippled lake vista.

I’m so glad that they didn’t use a lot of special effects in this film. It was mostly stunts and brilliant set design that more than made up for the lack of CG.

Casino Royale is definitely the best Bond movie I’ve seen. Looking at it as a film and not just “another Bond film”, its quality still breaks through. It’s quite good, and by quite good I mean it’s the best movie I’ve seen in the theater this year and perhaps also last year. Daniel Craig is awesome as Bond and I can’t wait for his second Bond film.